Blink with Stephen Gaghan | Development Hell

Join me, Dan Jones on This is History a Dynasty to Die for, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Someone once optioned something I'd written for the New Yorker and I'd taken the meeting or two, but nothing came of it. But there, one day, I got a call from Steve Gagin.

If you're a movie buff, you've heard the name. He'd just won the Oscar for writing Traffic, which was an amazing movie about the drug trade. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Michael Douglas and Benicio Del Toro and Don Cheadle, and a million other stars. And he'd just wrapped Siriana, another fantastic movie with Jeffrey Wright and George Clooney and Matt Damon. Anyway, I had never met him, he says. I'm coming to New York and I want to meet with you about your book, Blink.

Every writer dreams of getting a call like this. I promise you, I was thrilled to bits. And Steve flies in from Los Angeles, and we meet in a cafe somewhere downtown. And just so you get the visual. I'm short and skinny. Steve is, I don't know, 6'4. He's an athlete, absurdly handsome, maybe the most charming person I've ever met.

And he tells me he's obsessed with the chapter in Blink, about reading, emotions and how. There are people in the world who are really, really good at knowing what other people are thinking and feeling. Human lie detectors So over the next few years, I am basically Steve's assistant in cooking up a story about a human lie detector. It is, I believe to this day, an absolutely brilliant script. But have you ever seen a movie called Blink?

No, you haven't. And what I'm about to do is tell you the real story of why the movie never got made.

In fact, I'm going to do much more than that. In the next episode, I'm going to tell you another story about an amazing movie that never got made. And then after that another story, and then another story. Half a dozen episodes all told. Maybe even more if we get into it.

Because the thing I realized in talking to Steve about what happened with our long and hilarious, and ultimately heartbreaking experience in trying to turn Blink into a movie. Is that the best Hollywood stories are the stories that never got made. We're calling this series development hell. I promise you, there will be more name-dropping and celebrity drive-bys and hilarious digressions than you can shake a stick at. We're going to call up the biggest names we can find and just have them pitch us the ideas that broke their heart. I mean, come on.

How are you? Not along for the ride? But today my very own journey into development. Hell.

Well, thank you for doing this, Steve. What I really want to do is for you and I to recreate, just for a moment, the magic of that day. When we were jetting around L..A. in your, what car did you have? then? was it your Mercedes wagon?

So it's actually an incredible story. So I had finished my film, Siriana, which was like a four-and-a-half-year effort, and it was intense. And then I was like, What am I going to do next? So I'm sitting in Cafe Jeton and I had this idea, this crazy idea.

This is way before twilight. I wanted to do a vampire love story, and actually, what I wanted to do was a tragic love story with a happy ending. And I kept thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it, and then I was like, Oh my god, the guy is a vampire.

The love stories are as good as the things that keep the lovers apart. So picture a horse farm in Kentucky. It's winter. suddenly the smoke starts coming out of a chimney. These big farms are all owned by Europeans who are mysterious.

This guy comes to town and he meets a veterinarian on the farm and sparks fly. They obviously are really into each other, but then there's also all these weird deaths that start happening around some animals, some people.

Her brothers, her family, decide this guy is the one who's doing it, and so they decide enough's enough. They're going to kill him so they poison him. Now she's in love with him.

She discovers him the sun is setting, he's been poisoned, They think he's dead, they've gone.

She finds him, she thinks he's committed suicide by drinking the poison. Romeo and Juliet. She's so distraught. All she could do is drink the poison herself as she's dying. The sun is setting.

The vampire is waking up and he sees her there and realizes what's happened. And he has to do the one thing that he swore he would never do, which is reveal his true self and bite her. And so she dies, but then wakes up to eternal happiness being in love with this guy.

And I was, like, too much skepticism from every representative in my life. They're like, you cannot write a vampire movie, it is impossible, you've done no, any, whatever, so I'm sitting in Cafe Jeton trying to write my vampire love story.

I never got past page 10 or 12.

And so I'm reading your book, Blink, blink, I'm sitting in there, reading, blink, quite happily every day, drinking my coffee, failing at writing my vampire love story. And in and out, every once in a while comes a plucky young actor that, I'm pretty sure, is going places by the name of Leonardo DiCaprio. And so Leo sees me there.

And Leo had been interested in playing the role in Siriana that Matt Damon ultimately played. And in fact, if you know Leo at all. He never really says yes, but he never says no, so he never passes. I honestly think he still thinks he can be in Siriana. It's just still available.

And so anyway, now I see him in Jeton and he's like, Hey, what are you doing? We've got to cook something up. What are you interested in? Let's come up with something.

I think this could be a movie, I think there's a movie in here. Now. Knowing your book as you do, you realize that's a very challenging adaptation, right?

What?

And like almost a truth, a truth detector. You know that that a person could have this really heightened sense of. When people were being honest or not, and that they could, you know, they had, like, incredible empathy. Or, or who knows what it is, you know? But it's just it's like a fact of life, and for this, for someone, it's also. It's a little heavy in some ways, but it's quite interesting in the world we live in. Because I just I'm at that time and I don't think it's changed a lot. I felt like, you know, a lot of people are saying one thing and doing another.

Yeah, this person would always feel a little bit ahead of that curve.

We have nothing like, what are we going to do exactly?

There's this giant box of money, that's one thing, but then there are all these obligations that are unfunded to these workers. Now, if you could somehow buy that company and get rid of all of those unfunded obligations that are weighing down the company. You could have a really profitable company, you'd go from having a bankrupt company to actually a company that works really well.

You know, the only bad part of that story is that the people that actually put in the 40 years or 30 years of work, you know, are left actually without their pensions, or without health care, without very reduced pension support. And I think we were sensing that not only was this starting to happen, but it was going to happen in a really, really big way. And I think very quickly. We kind of got interested in. And we were thinking about general Motors, you know, and we saw this kind of General Motors bankruptcy coming. And that the pension stuff would be like, at the dead center of it. And we ended up making up our own fictional like steel company, American Steel.

And American Steel was basically being put in play, you know, by a kind of hedge fund operator who, unbeknownst to him, has a son. A kind of wayward son. So it's a father son story, and his wayward son has this truth detection ability. Yeah, he, he becomes aware of over the course of the film.

Estranged, right? A son who shares none of his father's values, but who desperately wants and cannot get his father's approval. You started with this really powerful family dynamic, which was going to be the engine of the movie. What does a son do if he wants to win his father's love? And yet he is incapable of competing on any of the terms of his father's world, right?

The son was a schoolteacher, wasn't he a schoolteacher, or like teaching in Harlem?

And he goes to work in this kind of shark shark environment.

He's tossing his son. A bone is not. The son is still on on the outside of disappointment, his father's eyes.

Like, what are the what are the pressures on young people right now when they, like, are looking at What's my future? It allows you to have a little bit of a shaggy dog story. But there's like, you know, like you're pointing out really heartfelt, emotional kind of dynamic, you know of wanting a father's love, you know? I mean, yes, it's, it's moving.

Or another judge might say, you can have the company, but you must honor every single obligation you have towards the retirement of your employees. It's up to the judge. So if you're a robber, baron, you're a predator, you're some hedge fund guy in Connecticut, and you're eyeing a bankrupt company and trying to figure out whether you can make it work. Everything depends on which judge oversees this particular case in bankruptcy court.

I have this gift I can see into someone's heart, and the dad, of course, rolls his eyes and says, You're bullshitting me. So the son sets out to prove to his dad he knows that he could see into someone's soul.

And then doesn't he have a series of tests? There's three tests that he he undergoes to prove to his dad he has this, this magical ability.

It's like people saying the line I had a ham sandwich for lunch. Oh, like hundreds of people, I had a ham sandwich for lunch. And he drags this kid in there and he's like, Who's lying?

And who's telling the truth? And he watches, like 150 people, saying I had a ham sandwich for lunch, and he gets 150 of them, right and right. And. And the guy is, like, immediately takes him to the racetrack, like out to Belmont, puts his binoculars to his eyes and starts having him look at horses.

Which horse is going to win this race? And he's like, looking at the horse and he's like, this is absurd, and the horse is like, No, no. Horses have inner lives like, what's going on?

And he starts like telling him about the emotional lives of these horses that, you know, are getting ready to go into the into the starting gate. And like, one is like, thinking about dinner, and one is like, had a bad sexual experience recently and feeling really shameful. And they're all just. And he's sort of by process of elimination, he's like, it's going to be this one.

It's going to be the Philly, the Philly is going to win, yeah, and so Philly. This professor who's like, literally a gambler. He ends up betting like, like, 15 grand, like at the track, and then money through bookies. And the kid is watching him and he's like, This guy's a psychopath, you know? And then photo finish.

And then, of course, the Philly wins, and, you know, and and our character doesn't believe it, you know. He just thinks this is complete nonsense, and he sort of proves it to him over and over and over.

So that was all straight from this. He was this autodidact guy.

And he wrote a book detailing his theories, and the book was the line about the book was the book was so long. No one read it, even Sylvan, which I always loved.

You know, like, I hadn't, I hadn't, you know, look, I hadn't thought about the script and looked at it. And I mean, a long time, probably 15 years, 15 years, yeah, and I am. I didn't even. I couldn't even find the blank folder, and I was like, and then I just searched for blank. And then up came a bunch of stuff. And like, and and and the draft. And it's so funny because you get to know that, you know, you put so much.

Effort, you know, into trying to make these movies. And like, it's so much love, it's love, and like, it feels like life or death. And I just, I just clicked on it and like, page 65 and up comes. And this is, this is dialogue, I completely forgotten this, this is dialogue between the kid and his dad. And they're trying to like, and they're, they're. Like, a local, really cheesy drinking place in Greenwich, where his half brother plays in a band called The Margin Calls.

And he's there with his family and his stepmom, and they're all nodding along while this bro band does cover cover cover songs. You know, they're eating like, you know, French tips or whatever, and his dad's a little tipsy and he's like.

And he's like, you know, this is all coming to a head? He's like, Am I sorry? I never carpooled or sliced oranges for t-ball? I don't know. I used to say that. They asked Napoleon to do reading circle, and that is like, the kid is like, we did some stuff, we looked at pictures.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's like, American tycoons have to appear cultured. So what's the first thing they buy? And then together they say bronzes, and now the dad's like J..P. Morgan Frick.

Teddy's like they had books, but they wanted to be Renaissance men like the Duke of Urbino. And Redmond says, Yeah, if you're a real snob, you know that Castello and Urbino like the back of your hand, but you don't talk about it. And then Teddy says, And I think I remember a bedtime rhyme about how much sleep a person needs. And he says, Nature needs five, Custom takes seven, Laziness takes nine and wickedness 11..

And his dad looks at him and says, His dad looks at him for a long moment and goes, I'd forgotten it's Scottish.

Which is, I mean, it's really funny, Malcolm, I mean, it's like, there's something back.

Was on a date with a girl.

And the date goes awry because he can tell every time she says something that she doesn't believe. And you realize that dating under those circumstances is impossible.

You know that because the dissembling is all laid bare, he's five steps ahead of all of it, and he's just cut himself off from it.

And Teddy is then given the job of picking between is it three different judges?

But so he's given that the son is given the job of figuring out who is the judge most likely to rule in his father's favor. And so he goes and contrives a reason right to to meet up with each one of these judges and assess their fundamental character.

And then the guy says, I've totally forgotten all this. He's like, let's cut the crap. I know who you are, I know who your father is. Human College.

Oh, right, we were at an eating club together, the pork. Our motto Feed your friends first.

They'll burn my house down and kill my family, tell them that.

Teddy says, You're signing a death certificate for American Steel, and he says, Yeah, well, maybe we'll get universal health care, maybe India will have a social revolution. Pay their workers $27.50 an hour plus benefits. Maybe woodland gnomes will make auto parts for free, and we'll all sit sherry in the park.

And he says, and he says, never, ever pick up a golf club again. Then he says, I'm a tennis player. Golf is for assholes.

Join me, Dan Jones on This is History a Dynasty to Die for, available wherever you get your podcasts.

So we're back. Agents are now heavily involved. Word has leaked that Steven Gagin has a secret new project. There's a frantic week where we find time on every movie executive's calendar. The plan is to hit every studio over the course of two days, which requires driving from the valley to Hollywood seven hours a day.

From Santa Monica to Culver City, we map our route like it's the invasion of Normandy. I fly out to L..A. because I am now fully in the fantasy. I book a bungalow at the Bel Air Hotel. Steve, Leo and yes, I'm calling him Leo at this point. Meet for drinks at the Bel Air, but Steve is late, so for a while, it's just me and Leo in a booth at the bar.

And for the first time in my life, I'm like, Where are the paparazzi? And the next morning off, we go all three of us.

So when we were going around pitching it, you know, we're meeting all these moguls, you know? On our day of driving around in the old station wagon, we have Leonardo DiCaprio with us.

For some reason, the Warner Brothers one. I did the most of the pitch and they were I knew no one in Hollywood, my first time ever pitching a movie. I go into this gorgeous executive room and there are two men in the room. One was very, very tall and very, very handsome and charismatic and warm.

One was short and sort of angry and whatever, not knowing any better. I assumed the tall, handsome one was the chairman of the studio and that this short guy was some kind of underling, flunky assistant, whatever. So I pitched the entire script to the tall guy. And then only to discover the short guy, who I've been ignoring the entire time as the chairman of the studio. And the tall guy is just some dude who was just in the office that day. It was hilarious.

And of course, they bid, which made me think that maybe the mistake we make, maybe their reasons for bidding were that. If they're going to come in here and ignore me, I'm going to show them all.

I mean, I think I probably have information about that that you actually don't have, that you may not even know.

Which, you know, I can explain.

Join me, Dan Jones on This is History a Dynasty to Die for, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Warner Brothers in, we have the sunroof, open the windows down. I'm wearing sunglasses, I never wear sunglasses. We don't even need Leo anymore.

He gets into his Prius and drives home. We pick a studio, we huddle with our agents, we pick a winner. Checks are cashed.

Some brilliant producer is assigned to our case and off we go. Only it never happens. A year passes, then two years.

Then three years. And this is why we're doing development. Hell, an entire series devoted to scripts that never happen. Because this is always the most devastating part of the story, the plot twists that happen off the page.

There were just some things I wanted to fix and I got into it and ended up working on it for like, months and months. And I changed a lot of stuff. But the main thing I did, you know, is the character, and a lot of this is just intuitive. I don't even know why I'm doing it.

But the character got, like, 10 years younger.

And Leo, you know, when he read it, he was really funny, he was like, he goes, buddy, buddy. If you didn't want me in the movie, all you had to do was say, So, it's no big deal. And it wasn't that I didn't want him in the movie. But this other thing had happened, kind of off camera, which was that I'd met Heath Ledger.

And I'd gotten to be very, very close with him, like instantly. I just had a real connection with him. That was kind of unusual and really special to me, and I got really excited and I started seeing him as the main character.

And once I started seeing that, I couldn't unsee it and obviously it was very delicate in a way. And Leo's totally cool. I mean, obviously he has a thousand choices, but in my mind it was a big deal.

I was just like, I really, if I just said to Leo, Hey, I would like to do this with Heath. He would be like, I'm a huge fan of his, I love him. Let's do it. It wouldn't have been a problem, but in my mind, it was really a thing. Definitely a thing at the studio. Because at first it was like, we don't want to. We're not that interested because it's like, you can have the biggest, really big star like someone, why would you do that?

So he died in a really tragic like. You have a beer and a benadryl and just absolute fluke any other day you're fine, but just breathing stops. And the dad and a guy who was really close with him, like the guy who was closest to him in his professional life. They were there with the body and our script was embedded with him. And your book was on the bedside table, and I think my number was on the script. Like, written, like. And these guys are in, as you can imagine, they are in shock.

And they dialed that number and I don't know why. And I'm in an airport with my wife just going from one place to another. And I literally, just, I just like, never happened to me before since, like, my feet went out from under me. I just literally sat down because I was like, what?

And the emotion, like, what they were going through.

I should not have been a party to in any way, really, and yet as a human or as somebody who just cares. I just was there and I was listening and my wife was looking at me and I remember her face. And I was just like I was speechless. And I just listened and listened and listened, and it was just really, really sad.

And it's still sad.

And I think that for me, I just had to put a pin in it. I just, I don't know it, just it's something.

No, I think it's really good to talk about it because it was sad.

And yet here we are, and we're talking about something that we really put a lot of heart and soul, a lot of effort into, and a lot of care. So I don't really have a clear answer of why we never made it, but I feel like, maybe I feel like that bit played a big role in it. But then again, I hadn't looked at it in a very long time. And then when I got it out, right before we got on, I was reading it. And I was just like, I ran to find my wife. We're still married, thank goodness.

And I was like, I could be crazy, but I think this script is really good. I think we really had something really special and we might have been ahead of our time or something. We're just glancing at scene by scene by scene, and it's just they're movie scenes, you know, and they're big, and it's such a good title.

And they opened it. Here's how the movie opens close-up a baby's blue eye, huge and blue like earth from space, staring at us. Blink. Begin credits.

Close-up a baby looking into lens, a happy, curious baby doing what babies do. It makes us happy. Now you hear a woman's voice off screen. He's so sweet, so sweet, so happy. happy, happy baby. Yes, you are.

The baby begins to scream close-up, Happy baby again, utterly adorable. But now, when observed in close-up, the baby's expression seems to give clues to complex thinking. And now you hear the father, he's trying to tell us something.

The father's tie drapes into the crib a wide 70s tie, hairy, thick wrist with expensive watch. Mother, of course, he is. I love mommy and daddy. Yes, I do, you hear the dad say a little desperado.

The mother's hands, white painted nails, gold, jewelry, deep tan appear to tuck the baby's sky blue blanket. Mother os. Tell him you love him, Daddy loves you. Yes, he does. He needs reassurance from his father.

And there's a pause and you hear the father say, sometimes it's not about me, and the mother says, it's pretty much always about you. The room is totally silent and you're just pushing on the baby's eyes, and the baby blinks, and you cut to the title blink.

And here's the thing Hollywood is full of these stories. We're going to touch on a whole series of them in the upcoming episodes. Next up in the feed is the story of a sci-fi thriller that had just a little too much FI and not quite enough PSI. With a twist that the studios just couldn't handle. You're going to hear about a biopic told through the eyes of an exotic animal.

You're going to hear the Oscar winner Charles Randolph get a little emotional about a project he did with Tom Cruise that fell apart. The minds behind some of Hollywood's biggest hits, talking about their biggest failures, join us as we take the temperature of development hell.

This episode was produced by Nina Byrd-Lawrence with Tali Emlin and Ben Nadav Haffrey. Editing by Sarah Nix. Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Engineering by Echo Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell.

Join me, Dan Jones on This is History a Dynasty to Die for, available wherever you get your podcasts.